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BLACK SADDLE – "Client: Travers" – 1959 This is the first episode of the 1959 –60 western series, BLACK SADDLE. A pre- BIG VALLEY Peter Breck headlines the series. Breck is an ex-gunfighter who has turned over a new leaf. After his brothers had been killed in a gunfight, Breck had taken to the books and is now a lawyer.

Breck is riding into the small town of Latigo to see his first ever client. He is stopped on the road outside town by several men and told to turn around. "Nobody is allowed in town!" Sneers the leader, K.L. Smith. Breck says he has business in town and to let him by. Breck finally needs to pull steel when the men refuse to let him pass. He disarms the men at gunpoint and sends their horses off running, before riding into Latigo.

The town is quiet as a church with many boarded up storefronts. His client, Anna-Lisa, runs the local hotel. She tells Breck that a wealthy local rancher is forcing everyone to leave. His son had been killed in a fair gunfight and he intends to make the town suffer. The rancher, Onslow Stevens, now shows and asks Breck what his business is. Breck brushes him off.

Anna-Lisa would like Breck to start a court action to stop Stevens from destroying the town.

The town Marshal, Russell Johnson, also puts in an appearance. He knows Breck's reputation as a gunslinger, and finds it difficult to believe he is a lawyer. He relieves Breck of his pistols, as the town has a no guns inside town limits policy.

Stevens decides that Breck is going to be a problem and must go. He has several of his men deliver a rather sound beating after luring Breck to the stables. The men tell Breck to leave town or else. This of course has the opposite result.

Breck gets together with Marshal Johnson, and the two, hatch a plan. Breck pretends to leave town. Stevens' men follow to make sure. Johnson follows the men. At the town limits, Breck turns around to return. K.L. Smith and company, pull their guns to stop Breck. Marshal Johnson does the same on Smith etc. The men are all taken into town and jailed.

While all this has been going on, Stevens has arranged a bushwhacking of Johnson when he returns. Needless to say, that his plan does not quite work out. Breck spots the play and lead is exchanged between Breck, Johnson and Stevens' and his men. Stevens and his head gunman, Smith, are killed. The rest put under lock and key.

Guns won out over law books. Breck decides to stay in Latigo and hang out his shingle. Now that Stevens is dead, Breck figures the people will return.

The rest of the cast includes, John Mylong, Marg Cordova and Quintin Sondergaard.

The director was the prolific, John English. English cranked out some of the best serials of that particular genre. These include, ZORRO RIDES AGAIN, THE LONE RANGER, DICK TRACEY RETURNS, THE LONE RANGER RIDES AGAIN, KING OF THE Texas RANGERS and CAPTAIN America.

Before he co-starred in the hour-long, western show "The Big Valley" as Nick Evers, actor Peter Breck toplined the two season, half-hour long,black & white,western television series "The Black Saddle." Breck played Clay Culhane, a gunslinger who had changed his profession to attorney. Nevertheless, Clay is pretty swift on the draw. Miss Nora Travers (Anna Lisa) hires Culhane's services as an attorney in the town of Latigo, New Mexico, where villainous rancher Hannibal Pardee (Onslow Stevens) struggles to run everybody out of town. Vaguely, all of Pardee's actions are motivated by the enigmatic death of his son. He plans to buy Nora's land, but Culhane shows up and spoils Pardee's game. Nora is Clay's first client, and he sympathizes with the plight of her crippled father and her. Pardee's men push around Culhane. Culhane rescues Nora's crippled father who is laid up in bed from one of Pardee's gunmen. This gunman is lying prone outside on the second story gallery of the hotel with a Winchester with his eye on Deputy Marshall Gibson Scott (Russell Johnson of "Gilligans' Island") when Pardee's luck changes. Of course, Pardee's thugs do their level best to discourage our hero from representing the Travers. At one point, they try to drive Culhane out of town by beating him up in the livery stable, but he refuses to vamose. Eventually, Clay shoots it out in Main Street with Pardee and kills him. Meantime, Deputy Scott (Russell Johnson) plugs one of Pardee's gunfighters in his office. All western television series in the late 1950 had to offer something different, and "The Black Saddle" changes the lead into a peace-loving man. Ultimately Culhane will grow to be friends with Scott in later episodes as well as the lady who runs the hotel. The premise of a gunslinger turned attorney is colorful.